Greenland Melting

[Irvine511]

[q]Glaciers Flow to Sea at a Faster Pace, Study Says

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: February 17, 2006
The amount of ice flowing into the sea from large glaciers in southern Greenland has almost doubled in the last 10 years, possibly requiring scientists to increase estimates of how much the world's oceans could rise under the influence of global warming, according to a study being published today in the journal Science.

The study said there was evidence that the rise in flows would soon spread to glaciers farther north in Greenland, which is covered with an ancient ice sheet nearly two miles thick in places, and which holds enough water to raise global sea levels 20 feet or more should it all flow into the ocean.

The study compared various satellite measurements of the creeping ice in 1996, 2000 and 2005, and was done by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of Kansas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/s...gin&adxnnlx=1140188387-fQmY59rKKIT9jGMAkqF8wQ

[/q]

 

[A_Wanderer]

Well at this rate a northwest passage in the next centure is not impossible.

 

[SunBloc]

It's hard to imagine that this would raise GLOBAL sea levels 20 feet or more. That is a LOT of ice!

 

[A_Wanderer]

If they did rise that much I think that we would see some beautiful coral reefs emerge, and then after that we would find limestone beds in the middle of deserts.

 

[Irvine511]

If they did rise that much I think that we would see some beautiful coral reefs emerge, and then after that we would find limestone beds in the middle of deserts.

i wonder how it will cost to build a levee system to prevent new york from slipping under?

 

[A_Wanderer]

Probably more than to just engineer global climate to be favourable - if we are going to be messing with nature anyway we should at least stack it in our favour.

 

[randhail]

Republicans everywhere are sticking there fingers in their ears singing la la la la la, I don't hear anything, global warming is not scientific fact.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland
Ola M. Johannessen 1*, Kirill Khvorostovsky 2, Martin W. Miles 3, Leonid P. Bobylev 2

A continuous data set of Greenland Ice Sheet altimeter height from ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites, 1992 to 2003, has been analyzed. An increase of 6.4 ± 0.2 centimeters per year is found in the vast interior areas above 1500 meters, in contrast to previous reports of high-elevation balance. Below 1500 meters, the elevation-change rate is -2.0 ± 0.9 cm/year, in qualitative agreement with reported thinning in the ice-sheet margins. The spatially averaged increase is 5.4 ± 0.2 cm/year, or ~60 cm over 11 years, or ~54 cm when corrected for isostatic uplift. Winter elevation changes are shown to be linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation.

source

Global Warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet

The Greenland coastal temperatures have followed the early 20th century global warming trend. Since 1940, however, the Greenland coastal stations data have undergone predominantly a cooling trend. At the summit of the Greenland ice sheet the summer average temperature has decreased at the rate of 2.2 °C per decade since the beginning of the measurements in 1987. This suggests that the Greenland ice sheet and coastal regions are not following the current global warming trend. A considerable and rapid warming over all of coastal Greenland occurred in the 1920s when the average annual surface air temperature rose between 2 and 4 °C in less than ten years (at some stations the increase in winter temperature was as high as 6 °C). This rapid warming, at a time when the change in anthropogenic production of greenhouse gases was well below the current level, suggests a high natural variability in the regional climate. High anticorrelations (r = -0.84 to -0.93) between the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) index and Greenland temperature time series suggest a physical connection between these processes. Therefore, the future changes in the NAO and Northern Annular Mode may be of critical consequence to the future temperature forcing of the Greenland ice sheet melt rates.

link

The ice on Greenland will raise seal levels if it melts, the ice that floats on the oceans will not. The Antarctic Peninsula shows a warming trend, the interior is cooling.

Avoidable and/or anthropogenic???

 

[martha]

i wonder how it will cost to build a levee system to prevent new york from slipping under?

I was going to make a smart-ass comment something along the lines of So what let it slip under, then I realized that would mean even more New Yorkers living out here in the sunshine and traffic, complaining endlessly about how SoCal isn't New York.

So yeah, build that levee!

 

[A_Wanderer]

Just raise the city

 

[nbcrusader]

Republicans everywhere are sticking there fingers in their ears singing la la la la la, I don't hear anything, global warming is not scientific fact.

No, some just question the arrogance of believing we can materially alter natural cycles.

 

[Irvine511]

No, some just question the arrogance of believing we can materially alter natural cycles.

well, then there would be no need for the Bush administration to gag him, would there?

[q]Climate change: On the edge
Greenland ice cap breaking up at twice the rate it was five years ago, says scientist Bush tried to gag
By Jim Hansen
Published: 17 February 2006
A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic.

Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a Nasa climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the Nasa public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of Nasa's mission is to understand and protect the planet.

This new satellite data is a remarkable advance. We are seeing for the first time the detailed behaviour of the ice streams that are draining the Greenland ice sheet. They show that Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometres of ice a year. It is different from even two years ago, when people still said the ice sheet was in balance.

Hundreds of cubic kilometres sounds like a lot of ice. But this is just the beginning. Once a sheet starts to disintegrate, it can reach a tipping point beyond which break-up is explosively rapid. The issue is how close we are getting to that tipping point. The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland. So we may be on the edge.

[...]

How long have we got? We have to stabilise emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable. If we are to stop that, we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon. We don't have much time left.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article345926.ece

[/q]



ugh, how arrogant.

 

[martha]

No, some just question the arrogance of believing we can materially alter natural cycles.

Isn't the notion that all our pollution won't alter air, water, animals, and weather a more arrogant position, especially in the face of evidence to the contrary?

 

[verte76]

If it's true we're in for alot more water in the seas.

 

[nbcrusader]

Isn't the notion that all our pollution won't alter air, water, animals, and weather a more arrogant position, especially in the face of evidence to the contrary?

No, I wasn't playing the “extreme” game here. We can impact our environment and can make meaningful changes (look at the anti-litter campaigns of the 70's).

What we fail to recognize is the vastness of our atmosphere, the relatively small amount of pollutants we produce (in relation to the size of the atmosphere) and the magnitude of natural cycles impacting our weather.

There is no money in watching natural cycles.

 

[yolland]

Poor polar bears.

 

[Rono]

No, some just question the arrogance of believing we can materially alter natural cycles.

We can, 6.5 bilion people don`t nothing and only burning and poluting must have influence,...i think it is arrogant to think that we have no influence with our SUV`s and energy consuming computers.

 

[nbcrusader]

We can, 6.5 bilion people don`t nothing and only burning and poluting must have influence,...i think it is arrogant to think that we have no influence with our SUV`s and energy consuming computers.

Must have an influence and the extent we have a material influence over natural cycles are two different things. Did you feel bad about using your energy consuming computer to post? Probably not.

 

[Jamila]

Thank you for this thread.

 

[anitram]

It's hard to imagine that this would raise GLOBAL sea levels 20 feet or more. That is a LOT of ice!

You have to factor in the thermal expansion of water in the overall volume increase.